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paraquat

Next week, governments from around the world will decide whether to put strict controls on Syngenta's highly toxic herbicide paraquat — or maintain the status quo.

This pesticide has long been banned in its country of origin, Switzerland, and its use is highly restricted in most industrialized nations, including the U.S. Yet it continues to be sold indiscriminately in developing countries where farmers and workers often cannot read technical labels and are unable to protect themselves from the pesticide's harmful effects.

Pesticide use on the massive palm oil plantations throughout Asia and the Pacific is putting the health of communities and agricultural workers at risk. This week, PAN's office in the region will press palm oil companies to stop use of the most dangerous pesticides, including the infamous herbicide paraquat.

PAN's resolution and petition will be presented on March 8 to the meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an organization made up of companies that produce, market, invest and trade in palm oil, as well as environmental and other nonprofit organizations. The list of companies involved includes U.S. giants such as Cargill, Nestle, and Unilever.

My grandfather's Parkinson's was pretty far along by the time I knew him. I remember as a 4-year-old straining to understand his tremoring voice which — when combined with his thick Swedish accent — was almost impossible for me and my sister to understand. Even as a small child, I could tell it broke his heart.

In a study released last week, researchers explain exactly how pesticides can interact with the brain to trigger this incurable disease. Their findings may help prevent and treat Parkinson's for future generations.

A combination of commonly used pesticides can triple the risk of Parkinson's disease (PD), according to a new study released last week in the European Journal of Epidemiology. People who work and/or live near fields sprayed with paraquat, maneb and ziram are more likely to suffer from the degenerative central nervous system disorder, for which there is no cure.

Researchers note that their findings provide the first strong evidence in humans that exposure to several pesticides increases risk of PD more than exposure to individual chemicals alone.

Earlier this month in Rome, the deadly pesticide paraquat moved a step closer to global phaseout. Paraquat is widely known in the developing world as the poison of choice for farmer suicides, and was notorious in the 1970s as the herbicide sprayed by the U.S. government to try to eradicate marijuana plots in Mexico.

When I hear news of Syngenta, my ears perk up. This corporate giant has poisoned my family's water with a pesticide that wreaks havoc on our hormone systems, and is linked to cancer and reduced fertility.

Atrazine, the culprit, can't be used in Europe because it sticks around in the water far too long for European standards. Yet Swiss-based Syngenta set up their North American Syngenta Seeds headquarters in a Minneapolis suburb to make sure they keep hold of the U.S. Midwest — all the while gobbling up seed companies and positioning themselves alongside Monsanto as major players in the genetically engineered (GE) seed market.